The exploration of the moon presents many challenges including the lack of atmosphere and extreme temperatures. Another challenge with moon exploration involves problems created by the lunar regolith. A regolith is generally a layer of loose matter that covers a rocky underlayer. The lunar regolith, covers most of the surface of the moon and contains a large amount of lunar agglutinate. On the order of 50% of the lunar surface is agglutinate.
Lunar agglutinates are individual particles which are made up a random mixture of smaller particles of material that are fused together with vesicular flow-banded glass. Agglutinates characteristics include highly irregular shapes containing nanophase elemental iron) (Fe° as well as a heterogeneous mixture of glass, and various mineral phases. Agglutinates are not naturally formed on the Earth since natural formation requires subjecting a material to a large number of impacts of micrometeors in a vacuum. Agglutinate particles are similar to dust in size but have sharp glassy edges instead of having a soft texture. Because of the glassy characteristics and the particles sizes, agglutinates present challenges for equipment and materials used by man on the moon.
During moon landings, agglutinates invade seals in spacesuits causing them to bleed oxygen. The agglutinates also wear away at outer layers of spacesuits and scratch helmet and camera lenses. During moon operations, radiators and mechanical joints can be coated or impeded by agglutinate and cease to function properly. Other problems have also been reported resulting from lunar agglutinate, including problems that affect the safety of the astronauts.
Future lunar exploration requires the development of a lunar agglutinate simulant to create an environment with agglutinate on Earth in which researchers can test equipment and material for use on the moon. Such a testing environment will require a large amount of high quality agglutinate simulant having a high degree of characteristic accuracy. Tons of agglutinate simulant at a reasonable cost are needed for testing. Traditional methods for producing quality agglutinate simulant used by others only produce a few grams at a time. These methods are proprietary, however they likely involve some type of particulate acceleration and impact. Other traditional methods can produce larger quantities, but the simulant produced by these methods is of lower quality in that it less accurately represents the lunar agglutinate.
One traditional, high quantity and relatively low quality agglutinate simulant production method involves the use of an In-Flight Sustained Shockwave Plasma Reactor (ISSP). In this method, a plasma arc is created by a hollow central cathode that is radially surrounded by anodes. A mineral material is injected into the plasma through the central cathode and free falls through the plasma arc to a collector. Free fall of the mineral material through the plasma arc produces the agglutinate simulant in relatively high quantities however the resulting agglutinate simulant is not a satisfactory simulation of the chemical, mineralogical or textural features of the lunar agglutinate. Among other things, this traditional method does not allow for control the ratio of glass in the agglutinate and is only able to produce a few grams per hour.
The foregoing examples of the related art and limitations related therewith are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive. Other limitations of the related art will become apparent to those of skill in the art upon reading of the specification and a study of the drawings.